


Things that never were

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Entry Wounds, Life Born of Fire, M/M, takes place after S8 with brief spoilers for Music to Die For
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 23:15:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3186896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shouldn't be here</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things that never were

Lewis drives slowly, looking for the restaurant and for somewhere to park. The arrangement was made for eight thirty which is in ten minutes. 

It is an icy, clear evening illuminated by street lights and coloured lights. The last Friday before Christmas and silver stars and baubles are strung like the weekly wash across the road. 

The village, really a suburb, is an S of road with a delicatessen, a Tesco Metro, an antique shop and a few pubs and restaurants. It is a short drive from the city but far enough away for the avoidance of chance encounters with familiar faces from the nick. He shouldn’t be here. It is a betrayal and none of his business but the place developed its own gravitational pull when he first heard its name today. An ordinary street which should not have all time and space crowding in on it.

He finds a parking space (a Christmas miracle) and waits. He is outside a Greek restaurant, tonight featuring a Tom Jones tribute act. There are some last ditch office Christmas parties going strong inside. Through the half-glazed window he can see ‘Delilah’ happening, even if he can’t hear it. CID’s annual get-together was last Friday and Lewis had sat in the local Italian between Laura and James, arm pressed to his arm at the crowded table even while his hand covered Laura’s. Recognising something was different with James, absorbing this knowledge through the skin (or however else they usually manage it). 

He’d had a sense of it already but, following the paths of different cases, he had not taken the time to decode the signals he was receiving. Work which had once been their home, the place where they made their little Chuckle Brothers life together, had wrenched them apart. Not that he hadn’t himself, half aware, instigated the whole thing.

He watches another restaurant from across the road. It is a modern place with a complicated name only James would know the meaning of, all glass and polished wood, white tablecloths, jus of this, rillettes of that. It had taken no subterfuge to find out about it. The arrangement had been made in his presence, a phone call unintentionally overheard.

After five minutes a man goes in. He relinquishes his coat to a waiter and is seated at an empty table for two near the window. Lewis suspects he is the one. He is tall enough, dark complexioned, in his forties. Is he handsome? Probably. He gazes out at the street, occasionally glancing at his phone. The possibility of his theory taking human form and ordering itself a drink triggers a series of responses in Lewis’ gut, almost chemical reactions; regret, protectiveness, relief, despair, anxiety. Not so unusual, not so unfamiliar. The new one in the mix is jealousy.

After the RG Cole case he had a dream.

It is a stormy day, a gale rages and James is bare knuckle boxing. In jeans and stripped to the waist, the crowd parts to admit him to the makeshift ring. Autumn leaves are flung into the air, the wind whistles through abandoned buildings and he faces his opponent. They circle briefly and the fight begins. Broughton Rules apply; no kicking, no gouging, last man standing wins.

Lewis, on his way to break things up, to arrest the whole damn lot of them, unexpectedly coming across James, cannot tear his gaze from the taut muscle, the controlled strength of his movements, the sharp, thrusting blows he delivers. 

Then sirens wail, the raid starts and the place is flooded with police. James, distracted, isn’t quick enough to deflect a blow coming his way and the punch knocks him to the ground. 

Everyone vanishes; the other fighter, the crowd, the police, until it is just the two of them alone outside a disused warehouse. On his knees in the dirt, he tries to get James to regain consciousness. The wind blows up again, the rain thunders down, he cannot be roused. Lewis, in despair, and to keep his body from the warring elements pulls him into his arms and holds him.

Variations of the dream assail him from time to time. The scenery and narrative change but all have that same terrifying loss at their heart and are darkly familiar from the years after Val. He is not spared when it all comes to pass at the end of the Will McEwan case. Given shape and substance by the carefully registered memory of how it really would be to have James dying in his arms, the dreams just become more terrifying. 

None of it has any business in his subconscious. James has never been his. As far as he knows, he has never been anyone’s. Although after the fire, in that scrubbed, white hospital room in a moment which James would recall nothing of, they had almost belonged to each other.

James was in and out of consciousness throughout the night, fighting the effect of the drugs the doctors said he had been given in a spiked drink. He was murmuring tormented, raw-throated nonsense about transsexuals and priests, sin and death. Lewis had sat on the bed and stroked his shaved penitent’s hair and tried to soothe him.  
Not entirely of sound mind himself through shock and exhaustion, he was only distantly aware of what he was saying. It hardly mattered, it was not his words James seemed to respond to but the sound of his voice. He could have been reciting the Road Traffic Act it probably wouldn’t have made any difference.

But he knows he started with easy, calming words, he knows he kept telling him all was well and that he could sleep, so he was surprised later to find that the words produced by his unengaged, uncensored brain were ones he might use to a lover; sweetheart, pet, my own. An idea which was so impossible, so frightening, it should never have been given voice.

When James was finally peaceful Lewis went home. He changed into suit and tie, and returned in time to be there when he properly woke. Channelling Morse and his brilliant, disdainful distance, he made the position clear. He was pleased with his impersonation but James didn’t seem to notice; he was just looking at him in wonder.

If James had taken one of the other paths open to him, if he had become priest, scholar or spy, would his life have been better, would he have found somewhere to belong more permanent than the flawed romantic comedy to which he had given his best years? And where would Lewis be if he had? He doesn’t like to think of it.

It is not the first time this thought has occurred to him, not by a long way and he doesn’t need any daft dreams to illustrate the point. He was a mess when he came back from secondment and there wasn’t anyone he hadn’t driven away. The last thing he expected was to find a colleague, a subordinate officer for that matter, who would become a friend; someone walking by his side, patient and loyal, through the blood drenched years. He hopes he has been of some use to James in return; a man who is, in different ways, just as broken as he. The truth is, if he had not lost his wife in the way he did, he might not have been able to see James clearly at all. 

None of this means he should be carting him off to bed at the first opportunity, even assuming he is willing. It means the opposite.

And yet. And yet, forgetting everything, if all the things against them fell away, if it were just the two of them without the complications of age and gender, work and the intrusive world -. 

But this is more daftness, if you detach yourself from the things that make you what you are, what are you left with? 

In another dream James is rowing. Sometimes with a crew, sometimes alone, always away from Lewis who watches from the river bank. He is battling hard up river, against the current, engaging mind and long, lean body in complete focus. The landscape of the dream alters and James rows out to sea. It is a wild sea, the waves rearing up, taking the little boat high and dropping it down. There are diving dolphins and whirling seagulls and the excitement of flight until finally a huge wave swallows the boat and James is gone, leaving not so much as a ripple on the now still water to show he had been there. The mood is oddly joyful; James, he understands, has been set free.

Once, in a more anxious variation of the dream, they row together, but Lewis feels old, he struggles, holds them back, cannot keep up with his partner and James is unrelenting, furiously trying to power them forward.

Strangely, at the end of the Alistair Stoke case, this dream also happened. But in life James was careful to match his pace, mocking him gently while quietly taking the greater burden. Exactly how it goes with them in the ordinary way of things. Sometimes his certainties crumble.

He sees a familiar form approaching on foot from the train station, recognises the head above everyone else’s first, then the slight hunch of his bearing and slow, deceptively relaxed step. He is wearing a different coat (collar up) so he has been home to change. He didn’t drive so perhaps he plans to go back with the person he is meeting. Other troubling thoughts follow.

James sees him, of course he does. He crosses the road, going round to the passenger side, sliding in beside him. Lewis waits for justified anger, he waits, at least, for a question.

But they are both silent until James says, “I didn’t know how else to tell you.”

Lewis reaches across and takes his hand.

“I remember, you know,” James says, looking down at their hands clasped together. “The night in hospital, after you pulled me from the fire.”

Even now Lewis doesn’t speak. If he remains silent he can still deny this to himself and sleep beside Laura with a clear conscience.

“Your hand on my head, your voice.” James looks at him. “Or did I imagine it? I was pretty out of it.”

“No,” he finally admits. “You didn’t imagine it.”

“Robbie?”

“You’d best go, James,” he says softly. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

“But it’s not -,” he starts, almost shouts, gripping Lewis’ hand so hard it later bruises, and then stops himself, regains his composure, nods and lets him go.

Lewis watches him cross the road and signal to the man in the restaurant (Lewis has picked the right one). He lights a cigarette and smokes, leaning his shoulder against the wall, his unwavering gaze on the pavement. In the time it takes him to finish, Lewis misses his last chance.

James joins the man. Lewis sees him smile at something his companion says, say something in response, no doubt witty, sharp or self-deprecating. It gets the dark haired man laughing. He can see already they are a good fit and he schools himself to be glad of it.

Lewis has this dream. He is in the north east, somewhere remote, in a cottage built of irregular stone. He sits beside a fire which burns brightly in the grate. Outside it is snowing; settling, deepening, the pure white of new snow revealing and then obscuring the tracks of a scurrying animal, closing down the roads and pathways. The side of the house seems to open out into a forest and a giant pine, marking the solstice is both inside and out. Beside him on a side table a bottle of wine, deepest burgundy in colour, is open to breathe next to two glasses. There is the crackle of burning logs but otherwise the silence is complete. On another armchair there is an open book face down to save the page.

 

End

 

January 2015


End file.
